Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2012

Ridgewood

RIDGEWOOD — A teenager was arraigned this month on charges he stole a cell phone during a massive fight on a G train subway car in Ridgewood, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Richard Brown said. Comment.

Sketch courtesy NYPD

Jamaica

Police said Tuesday evening they have arrested a Jamaica man in connection with the string of firebombings in southeast Queens on New Year’s Day that galvanized the city’s religious community and elected officials to decry hate crimes. Comment.

Astoria

The door handle and the walls of Butcher Bar may be adorned with vintage cleavers, but the owners of the new butcher shop and barbecue restaurant in Astoria are committed to a kinder carnivorous meal. Comment.

Corona

The holidays came early for Cisco and Spangles, two Andean bears at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Queens Zoo. Zookeepers gave the bears the gifts so that they could exercise their minds and bodies. Comment.

Floral Park

Letters

In a story that ran Nov. 30 on “Fox 5 News,” Ashley Mastronardi reported on the Broadway-Flushing Homeowners Association’s efforts to receive New York City Landmark Historic District status for its neighborhood. Broadway-Flushing has already been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, with more than 1,300 properties within its boundaries. Comment.

Sunday, Jan. 1, 2012

Event

Many Hollywood films have at the center of their plots the destruction of a great metropolis at the hands of Mother Nature, and in 2011 Queens came closer than any year in recent memory to resembling a high-budget disaster flick. Comment.

Jamaica

LONG ISLAND CITY — A Long Island man was charged with seven robberies in a one-month period, all similar in nature and focused on one area in Long Island City, according to documents from the Queens district attorney. Comment.

Far Rockaway

Tatiana Wilson saw something first on Facebook. There was a fire back home at her house in Far Rockaway. The St. Bonaventure freshman guard called her mother, Temeka, who didn’t really go into details. Then she spoke to her sisters, Shaina and Kema. They broke the bad news to her. Comment.

Saturday, Dec. 31, 2011

Douglaston

The Douglaston Fairway will honor the memory of a fallen city Police Department officer by donating a portion of its sales to a scholarship fund established for the four teenage daughters he left behind. Comment.

South Jamaica

Shakim Fields worked at a Jamaica nonprofit helping at-risk youth and adults on the fringe of society to find jobs. He was baptized, not as a child but by choice as an adult, and had later studied to become a minister. Comment.

Jamaica

It was a down year for parents, students and teachers at Jamaica High School and three other southeast Queens schools after the city finally moved ahead with its plan to shut down the institutions, but their supporters said they will continue to fight in 2012. Comment.

Real Estate

It has been a year of striking deals and submitting plans for development projects in Queens, but the borough has seen little physical progress and sometimes fierce opposition to ambitious proposals as 2011 draws to a close. Comment.

Long Island City

Is it a trend? Is it a cuisine? New American is the moniker that is being widely bandied about, but what is it really? Perhaps it’s more of a culinary philosophy, intent on reminding us that what we eat originated on a farm, not in a factory. Comment.

Real Estate

Flushing

The Queens College women’s lacrosse team spent an emotional day Dec. 9 talking to the seventh- and eighth-grade classes of St. Gregory’s grammar school in Manhattan in the hopes of furthering the national “Stomp Out Bullying” campaign. Comment.

Editorial

There are a few reasons why the city should not go forward with plans to open a garbage transfer station on the waterfront in College Point. One of the strongest is that the flocks of birds attracted to the garbage will endanger planes landing at and taking off from nearby LaGuardia Airport. Comment.

Letters

Created by the state Office of Children and Family Services in 2006, the state Kinship Caregiver Program was meant to provide vital funding and services to grandparents and other familial caregivers who find themselves tasked with raising young children. It is supposed to help children stay in loving environments by maintaining a sense of stability and the familiar and preventing them from entering foster care. Comment.

Friday, Dec. 30, 2011

Queens Village

Lystra Huggins still remembers the day her mother came home with one pair of roller skates for her to share with her brother Leslie. She was 9, Leslie 10, and it was the day their family moved into a new house in Trinidad. Comment.

St. Albans

City Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) has been gearing up to make a big run during the 2013 election season, according to records, and the southeast Queens elected official is getting some major support online. Comment.

Animals

Hercules, the French bulldog, is the winner of the TimesLedger Newspapers’ first Queens Critter contest. His owner is Afrodite Pogiatzis of Astoria. Pogiatzis said the 1-year-old pup is a “sweet boy.” Comment.

Whitestone

An abandoned plot of land in Whitestone has been an eyesore and health hazard in the community for around a decade, and a lawmaker said the city has passed the buck onto private agencies without ensuring something is done. Comments (2).

Maspeth

The city Department of Transportation has been circulating fliers with maps of the Maspeth bypass plan for trucks that the agency says will prevent double parking and congestion, but civic leaders say the literature is nothing but confusing. Comment.

Corona

Oct. 15, 2003 was a landmark day for the history of Queens and jazz music. Jon Faddis, a Dizzy Gillespie contemporary, world-renowned trumpeter and music educator, paid a royal tribute to the great legacy of the iconic Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong when he played one of the maestro’s gold-plated Selmer trumpets atop the roof of the legend’s 107th Street residence in Corona. Comment.

Bayside

Members of the Oratorio Society of Queens take the stage on the Queensborough Performing Arts Center in Bayside for their annual holiday concert, commemorating the organization’s 85th anniversary. Comments (2).

Forest Hills

The Reform Temple of Forest Hills celebrated Haunkkah with an outdoor Menorah lighting and a sing-along. Some of the selections included “Candlelight” and “Maoz Tzur,” sung by fourth- and seventh-graders. Comment.

Long Island City

Long Island City’s success this season is rooted in its four seniors’ determination to prove themselves. Two years ago, they heard about Jeremiah Brown; last year it was Aaron Williams. The two transfers, who starred for LIC one year after the next, were on hand last week afternoon at LIC to see how far their former basketball teammates have come. Comment.

Letters

The sneaky ways the big oil companies are using to promote the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, is enough to arouse grave suspicions that the procedure is as dangerous as the environmental scientists say it is. Comment.

Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011

Crime

Last year 43 lives were lost to murder in southeast Queens.
It is difficult to determine how many of the 43 homicides were gang-related, but gang violence and easy access to guns coupled with an unwillingness of witnesses to come forward have made it hard for police and prosecutors to do their jobs. Comment.

Bayside

At night Bell Boulevard shines under the Bayside Village Business Improvement District’s holiday lights, but behind the scenes what was described as a “toxic” environment led the BID to oust its energetic executive director last week. Comments (1).

Hunters Point

The work on nonprofit City Harvest’s new 45,400-square-foot facility in Long Island City is not yet complete, but the organization is already sending out an average of 83,000 pounds of food a week to places that help the five boroughs’ hungry. Comment.

1) U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner is forced to resign in June after sexting several young woman, setting the stage for the election of Bob Turner, the first Republican to win the Queens seat in 90 years. Comment.

Forest Hills

Heading into 2011, the Queens political scene was supposed to be uneventful, with District Attorney Richard Brown facing no opposition and the foregone conclusion that Democratic judicial candidates would defeat their Republican rivals as they have for every year in recent memory. Comment.

Diversity

Before Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bill June 24 that would legalize same-sex marriage in New York state, Astoria LGBT activist Brendan Fay and his husband, Dr. Thomas Moulton, helped same-sex couples in New York cross the border into Canada or into neighboring states to get married. Comment.

Transit

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced last week they had come to an agreement on legislation to allow livery cabs to legally accept street hails in Queens, although two borough officials said they still have problems with the legislation. Comment.

Jackson Heights

With all five starters from last year lost to graduation and just three regulars back, expectations at Monsignor McClancy were justifiably tempered. Longtime Coach Don Kent really just had one goal. Comment.

Whitestone

Campus Magnet entered last Thursday’s basketball contest at Holy Cross red hot, still on a high from wins over Queens AA rivals Bayside and Cardozo. The Knights were aware of their opponent’s recent success and in front of a large crowd full of alumni, treating the non-league tilt with intensity befitting a playoff game. Comment.

Astoria

Astoria officials were telling their constituents to be aware and close their windows in light of the NYPD’s announcement that the authorities were searching for two individuals in connection with 11 burglaries in the neighborhood in recent weeks and another in June. Comment.

Transit

The MTA has approved a $12.7 billion 2012 budget at an impassioned meeting where several board members vainly tried to restore some of the service cuts imposed last year because of the agency’s financial straits. Comment.

Whitestone

Whitestone Times

Campus Magnet entered last Thursday’s basketball contest at Holy Cross red hot, still on a high from wins over Queens AA rivals Bayside and Cardozo. The Knights were aware of their opponent’s recent success and in front of a large crowd full of alumni, treating the non-league tilt with intensity befitting a playoff game. Comment.

Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2011

Astoria

An accident involving a truck that spilled produce all over the eastbound Grand Central Parkway snarled traffic on both sides of the parkway for hours Tuesday morning. The Breaking News Network reported the truck was overturned on the parkway at 31st Street at 8:13 a.m. Comment.